SCIE’s work on economics and the importance of informal care

Francis, Jennifer and McDaid, David
(2009)
SCIE’s work on economics and the importance of informal care.
In: Cutis, Lesley, (ed.)
Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2009.
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, pp. 27-33.
ISBN 9781902671642

Abstract

This paper introduces SCIE’s developing approach to economics and highlights one of the main issues that its work in this area has explored: incorporating the costs of informal, or ‘unpaid’, care in economic evaluations. Measuring and valuing unpaid care is fundamental to economic evaluation in social welfare if we wish to form a more complete picture of the true costs and benefits of an intervention and thus aid policy-makers in resource allocation decisions. However, there remains no consensus on the methodology for achieving this. In this brief article we introduce SCIE’s work, highlight the importance of measuring the economic impacts of unpaid care, and reflect on some of the different options available for their quantification and valuation.